Bug Catcher Ash
by luckylucky
Summary: Ash always dreamed of being one of the very best there ever was. To do that he needed a reliable partner and any of charmander, bulbasaur, and squirtle would serve as mighty friends tearing away the competition. However, what he was left with was a pleasant surprise.
1. Prologue

**Bug Catcher Ash**

"The starter pokemon for the Kanto region are charmander, bulbasaur, and squirtle," Professor Oak's bellowed out of the television that had been running ad nauseam.

January had come to past and after the New Years the start of the journey for the new trainers of Pallet Town would begin.

It was said there were two coming of ages in the Kanto. At twenty-one, you could have your first real drink at a bar and regret the morning afterwards and at 15 one could officially become a trainer.

Trainers at the age of fifteen were able to officially register for a Trainer License which would then allow them to purchase and carry pokeballs.

And tomorrow was the day where Pallet Town's very own Ash Ketchum set out to become the greatest trainer.

"Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle, all of them hold infinite potential and are even said to be able to Mega-Evolve if you bond strongly enough," Ash said while jumping on the bed knocking over a voltorb alarm clock he had set earlier as he raised a fist into the air. "Any one of them would be a great partner!"

Ash aspired to one day battle at the highest levels, to stand across in the stadium across from Champions like Cynthia, Lance, and Steven who are said to be the strongest in the world.

"It all starts tomorrow, my first steps to becoming a Pokemon Master!"

Ash had been waiting for this day for fifteen years and he grudgingly crammed thousands of pages of information into his head to pass his written test.

Ash was never the most attentive kid in class especially when the teacher would go on and on about impractical things like the quadratic equation or the average size of a Caterpie (which was one foot by the way).

Unsurprisingly, due to the plethora of relatively docile bug types (if you ignored the beedrill) the research of bug types was rather expensive.

Thus, in Pokemon Biology class, a third of the semester was dedicated to these small creatures.

Due to this, the Trainer's Written Test which challenged trainers on the basics of how to feed baby pokemon, constructing a healthy diet, and type advantage were still stuffed in in Ash's cranium.

But, what Ash didn't appreciate was the 30 percent of the test that was dedicated to the insects of the forest.

That was simply a ridiculous number of questions on bugs. Bugs seemed to invade Ash's mind the past couple of weeks until he swore he heard buzzes in his sleep.

As the Viridian Forest was like one of the first destinations of the trainers of Pallet, the proctor saw fit to tailor the test to this fact since there had been deaths there in the distant past.

Around twenty-five years ago a ten year old wearing a straw hat along with his net was found lying on the forest floor. By the time a travelling trainer had called 911, the boy had already passed away due to poison. The medics had determined that the boy must've agitated a weedle, a pokemon that does not attack unless provoked and had been stunned.

However, weedle poison is not life threatening as they are still in an immature form. Investigators concluded that the child must have had trouble moving due to the poison and been stuck on the forest floor for hours.

Eventually, due to hunger and a lack of food, the boy turned to eating what he thought were relatively harmless plant called Angel's Trumpet. While attractive like a flower, it was possibly lethal when consumed.

Beautiful yet deadly, an Angel's Trumpet could be said to represent the extremes of life.

Life's every second illustrated beauty from the wind blowing, to the sunset at twilight, and the smile of your family and pokemon partners.

Yet it was only beautiful because there are the ugly parts of life. After all if everything was beautiful, then nothing would be beautiful

It is the struggles in life that make the triumphs so glorious.

Unfortunately for that young boy, his mistakes paved the road for future trainers.

Following that boy's death, others followed, and as a result the age the trainer needed to gain a trainer's license was increased steadily until it became what it was today, fifteen.

People eventually figured out that allowing immature ten year olds the ability to train destructive pokemon was irresponsible. After all even a charmander, could set a building on fire with the smallest of Embers.

More importantly, this prevented ambitious children from purchasing pokeballs in hopes of becoming a Pokemon Master. Those ambitious kids were likely to get themselves in the emergency room as they recklessly dived deep into the territory of wild pokemon to attempt to catch the strongest pokemon in the area.

As such the extra five years were put in place to allow trainers to mature more along with an additional education to prepare trainers as much as possible.

The bill was largely successful as there the death rate of all trainers severely decreased as a result.

The Viridian Forest in particular didn't have a death since the bill had been enacted. After all, with how much time was dedicated to teaching students how to scavenge herbs in the forest and deal with the bugs of the forest, even the most incompetent of trainers could get by.

However, Ash could summarize what he learned about bugs with one sentence:

Bug types are the weakest.

While fire types could level landscapes with their flames, ghosts were sneaky tricksters that could control the pace of any battle, and even the adorable fairies could conquer the fiercest of dragons.

But bugs, out of all 18 types were least effective.

Seven! Count them, seven types resist bug type attacks. Bug Bite? More like Bug Tickle!

Although, grass types were equally ineffective, at least grass pokemon were generally much stronger especially in the beginning forms.

How can you compare the likes of a caterpie or wurmple to a bulbasaur, treeko, or snivy?

The difference in power level was evident.

How could he face Cynthia's Garchomp, said to be the strongest competitive battler, with an arsenal of string shot and bug bite.

Ash in no way hated bug pokemon, but he didn't think too highly of them either.

The only advantage the textbooks listed about bugs was their generally quick evolutionary lines.

Of course that seemed to be a double-edged swords as with a few exceptions, many of the physical capabilities of bugs seemed to lack compared to other types like dragons who in contrast slowly evolved into juggernauts of the battlefield.

Dragons are said to take years to evolve in the hands of an average trainer.

At the end of the day, Ash was looking to become a trainer on par with the Elite Four and the Champions, bug pokemon did not seem to provide many benefits on this journey.

With this thought, Ash fell asleep dreaming of riding dragonites and garchomps into the Indigo Plateau under the dim light of his television with whispers of Professor Oak describing charmander, bulbasaur, and squirtle without noticing that the hands of his alarm clock were not moving.

"Ughh," Ash groaned as the sunlight filtered into his room. "Just five more minutes Mom."

He rolled over and pressed into the bed as if he was attempting to burrow himself into it as he created a makeshift cocoon out of his blanket.

Suddenly his eyes opened, and he flew out of the bed like a butterfree evolving from a metapod.

"Ahh! What time is it?" he exclaimed. He looked around for his voltorb alarm clock and found it stuck with the big hand on the three and the small hand on the twelve.

"Crap!"

He picked up his backpack that he had prepared meticulously hours before filled with a couple potions, maps, and survival gear strapped it onto his shoulder and ran out.

Luckily he had gone to sleep in his travel clothes because he knew he'd have to get up early. Pick up of the starter pokemon began at 6:30 a.m. sharp.

It was set at this time to allow new trainers begin their journeys bright and early. At this time, nocturnal pokemon were going to sleep while many of those that had were up during the day had not quite awoken yet.

This created a relatively easier road to traverse with a much higher chance of catching isolated pokemon that woke up at this time like pidgeys. Furthermore, it allowed those in Pallet to make it to Viridian with most of daylight left and visit the Viridian Forest a bit when there was sunlight illuminating the pathways. Nighttime at the forest was much more dangerous due to the numerous huge trees blocking the moonlight making it hard for trainers to see even their own hands if a new moon was out.

Ash whizzed by various homes, and stopped to ask of the locals the time.

"Excuse me, Daisy; do you know what time it is?"

A homely but pretty brunette answered, "Ash, what are you still doing here, it's 9:30, shouldn't you be at the lab, your mother was planning a huge sendoff party a little down the road from it."

Ash cringed when he heard that, but he swallowed whatever fear he had of his mother and ran off towards Professor Oak's lab.

"Thanks Daisy!" he shouted while barreling into a couple of pedestrians.

"Geez, that boy is always a handful, he becomes too focused on pokemon and often forgets everything else" Daisy sighed with a hint of a smile. "Delia is going to murder him when he shows up late."

Ash sprinted across the road and the gates of Oak Corral came into view in the distance.

It usually took fifteen to twenty minutes to get to Professor Oak's lab from where he was earlier as the location had to be more remote than the town to accommodate for the land needed for the pokemon to graze.

Internally, Ash's mind was frantic.

"Not only did I wake up late, Mom is going to kill me when she finds out I was late, and the only thing worse is there might not be any pokemon left."

While Ash had a close relationship with the professor as he would come over and play with the pokemon at the lab with Gary as a child, it didn't exactly mean he would save a pokemon for him.

Many people flew to Pallet Town to start their adventure despite it being a bit out of the way because they knew the starters raised by Professor Oak were of the highest caliber when compared to the lesser labs in Kanto. That didn't even account for rich foreigners looking for the best pokemon of Kanto for their children to begin with as well.

Furthermore, being late on the day your journey started was one of the most irresponsible things one could do. It was indicative of a trainer likely to get lost and get himself killed in the wild. If you couldn't be on time on the most important day in your life, how could you be trusted to take care of yourself much less a pokemon on the road?

It wouldn't surprise him if the Professor withheld the Pokemon and made him wait another year to begin his journey. That was a lenient punishment compared to other trainers as many were denied a pokemon altogether by the Professor and he'd ban them from his lab.

Oak was a kind soul, and because of that he didn't want to see children die like the young kids in the past.

Ash hurriedly took a shortcut he had for years. He pushed his legs up jumped off the bricks supporting the gate and climbed over it to land on the other side.

He sprinted towards the door and as he placed his hand on the door he had opened countless time in the past, he hesitated.

 _Thump, Thump_

Ash's heart beat at a rapid pace as the door felt as heavy as steel when he opened it.

He rushed into the Oak's Lab and into the room where research was usually conducted.

There he flinched as he met the heated glare of Professor Oak.

"Ash, do you have any idea what time it is?" he asked without a hint of inflection in his voice.

Ash gulped, "Uh, ten sirs."

"Yes, almost four hours late is it, what's your excuse." Oak replied.

Ash thought for a second, he could complain about his alarm clock and push the blame onto that, but something told him that would tick the professor off even further.

"Honestly, I don't have one, some things went wrong because I was irresponsible, I'll take any punishment you deem necessary."

Oak leveled his gaze into Ash's eye and stared as if he could deeply as if he could see his soul.

He then nodded, and sighed.

"Very well, that was mature of you to admit your faults, if you hadn't I'd probably would've made you wait another year to drill some discipline into you."

Ash gulped hearing how close he had been to ruining the most important day of his life. Then his face brightened as a bit of hope shone through his eyes.

"Wait, does that mean there's still a starter left?"

The professor grinned, "Luckily for you there's one pokemon left and I believe it holds great potential."

Ash cheered at that as Oak walked over to a tube like table. He clicked a button and a standard red and white pokeball rose on a platform. Oak grabbed the ball and handed it to Ash.

"Go ahead, open it," Oak said.

Ash held the pokeball reverently in his two hands and he couldn't help but feel that the red of the ball was brighter than any apple and the silvery white bottom shined brighter than the stars.

This pokeball after all contained his first pokemon, his starter, and his first partner.

He imagined a draconic black charizard soaring through the sky, a huge venusaur whose very steps caused earthquakes, and a blastoise whose very hydro pump created valleys.

"Charmander, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, they'd all be great!" he said.

Oak smirked a bit hearing that.

"Go pokeball!"

Ash held his breath as his partner pokemon revealed itself as:

"Caterpie"

 **Cut!**

 **Well after years of lurking (I mean leeching), I've actually written something on this site. After reading some captivating stories like Traveler and Essence I've caught the Pokemon bug (forgive the horrible pun.)**

 **This story isn't meant to be as serious as those, but still build a world nonetheless. I just thought the idea of Ash being a bug catcher would be funny in the shower so I ran with it. And this first chapter is the result of that.**

 **I intend to make this somewhat a slice of life, but an adventure all the same.**

 **So please join me on this journey (yes I've used that word way too much) and kindly leave some critical review to improve the story!**


	2. Author's note

**Hey guys!**

 **I'd just like to let you know that I'll be revising the story(or what little of it there was).**

 **This is mainly due to me rereading the prologue and feeling it's a bit rushed. I feel like I could do better and should refine the story a bit more.**

 **I will be keeping the same premise of Ash being a bug pokemon specialist, but I want to do it better.**

 **To me this prologue felt too generic and close to how the anime and Ash was in the anime.**

 **This was meant to be a comedy at first where Ash goes around with caterpie and other weaker bugs beating trainers with string shot and tactics. However, I feel that might not suit my writing style.**

 **I'd probably do better with a slightly more serious story. While this story hasn't taken off, there's an alternate route that I'll be walking on in the rehash.**

 **Currently I'm about 600 words into the improved version of the story. I'll incorporate some ideas from the previous chapter in the new one as well.**

 **I'll probably delete this story so I can get the name back once I finish and edit the first chapter of the revised version.**

 **Thank you very much for getting through this note and please support me! :D**


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